


Had I Been a King; How I Would Have Gone

by rainbowflavouredfabulous



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brocket Hall, Deliberate Preteniousness, F/M, Lord Melbourne POV, Overuse of metaphors and similes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 12:05:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8248135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowflavouredfabulous/pseuds/rainbowflavouredfabulous
Summary: There’s a theory that people born from the same star gravitate to each other. It's an ethereal desire so to speak, that pulls Queen Victoria and Lord Melbourne together; a basic and primal want stemmed from atoms demanding to return to each other.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 2012 me: I'll never write angst  
> 2016 me: *emerges from the shadows clicking fingers*
> 
> I actually don't like monarchies nor do I believe that the UK is actually a great country. I hate this country and its colonialism but late 19th century history used to be a special interest of mine and ITV Victoria reignited it, thus this fic was born. Somehow I pushed through the usual limits of my medication and wrote this when really I should've have been sleeping but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Thanks to Jasmine for all the encouragement and late night messaging. Shoutout to my beta Soph for making this better, I am infinitely in her debt
> 
> Fic title from ["Hurt Me Now" by Austra](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXVjx8TZH-I)

There’s a theory that people born from the same star gravitate to each other. It's an ethereal desire so to speak, that pulls Queen Victoria and Lord Melbourne together; a basic and primal want stemmed from atoms demanding to return to each other.

William feels it when he notices Victoria walking down the path, his eyes dragged away from the rooks. He hears the rustling and moves up from the pillar as she reveals her face, the veil not entirely concealing her face. He looks round for any uninvited ears, aware of how people talk, about how the young Queen is being somewhat too friendly with her Prime Minister, a older man whose history is tarnished with scandal and disrepute. 

"Ah, it is you, ma'am. I couldn't tell," he professes. 

"The butler said you would be here," Victoria explains. William internally winces - it's becoming a habit for the youthful Queen to turn up at his residence, and it's not a particularly good habit. He can already imagine the whispers and gossip in the corridors, "Have you heard about our master and the Queen? They're getting awfully close, aren't they?" 

He turns, hoping any negative emotion doesn't show on his face. For the few years Victoria has known him, she reads him easily, noticing the smallest of bad moods and so he moves away, points to the trees where his beloved rooks stay. "I come here for the rooks. They're sociable animals. A gathering like this is called a parliament," looking back at Victoria, he hopes the irony isn't missed on her. It isn't and he cherishes her smile and genuine interest. It's intoxicating to him so he looks away again briefly. "Altogether more civilised than their human equivalent." He misses her smile though and looks back at his true north, unable to stop the small grin on his face. This is the tiny piece of happiness he allows himself now. 

William watches her fidget and suddenly, he knows this isn't merely a social call. His Queen looks away briefly, "I'm sorry to disturb you Lord M." She pauses and he feels her anxiety, "but I had to talk to you." She too must feel the compulsion and inches further closer to him. 

He knows what's coming. He doesn't want to look away, yet he does. "Brocket Hall is honoured ma'am," he claims, propriety preventing him from proclaiming the truth, that he's been waiting for this very day, that no matter what he desires, no matter how much their very atoms beg for each other, it will and could never be. 

But he allows himself something. He watches Victoria struggle with her words, the opposite of the calm and poised woman he's grown to love. 

"I've come here incognito, of course," she tells him. William thinks fondly of her, how even with her years of reign, she still believes she will have some license, able to be an ordinary woman looking for her ordinary lover, not a Queen with expectations and burdened by the rules of court. 

He smiles again, a private one, a vulnerable one, just for Victoria. "Of course, but your presence cannot be entirely disguised," he warns her gently, observing how she is watching his every move and breath. 

Neither of them say anything for a few drawn out seconds. William wishes that this could be over faster, for both their sakes, but yet it feels like his pulse is slowing and time is pausing around them, a small part of history just for them. 

"Yesterday, I realised something." She starts and William can no longer resist the temptation to move closer to his Queen, "Yes ma'am?" 

Victoria settles her breathing, steels her nerves and he wants to hold her hand, do anything for her just so she doesn't look scared anymore. Victoria spends so much time being the Queen of England, a strong figurehead for the greatest nation in time that William forgets that comparatively, she is one of the youngest monarchs this country has seen, barely an adult when she ascended to the throne. She appears so small and young and somehow, he knows that she is as strong as any King that came before her. 

"I think perhaps now, I'm speaking as a woman, and not as a Queen," Victoria tells him and this is when William becomes confused. For her entire life, Alexandrina Victoria was assumed to simply be a girl, unexpected to amount to the greatness of her relatives before her. William remembers telling her that she was every inch a Queen and truly, she is. He tilts his head and listens to Victoria, the woman and not Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 

"At the beginning, I thought you were the father I never had. But now I feel, I know, that you're the only companion I could ever desire." 

"I feel; I know," she corrects herself. It's a urge that reaches far greater than her head and her heart - it delves further, into the atoms that demand that they return to their companions, atoms in a star forged long before coronations and duty. 

William knew this day would come. Emma told him. They were walking down a long corridor once, when they discussed that eventually their Queen would recognise her feelings for him, and that the longer he denied her and his own emotions, the more that it would hurt. And it did. It hurt more than losing his entire family, his reputation. But for now, he takes Victoria's hand and smiles softly so that he doesn't cry. 

"Did you know that rooks mate for life?" 

He permits himself to briefly look at her, settles on her lips, can't tear himself away from his true north. 

"Every year they, they build their nests together, renew those little civilities that make a marriage sparkle." He thinks back to the move from Kensington to Buckingham, following his Queen round her - their, in another universe, another galaxy, another nebula - home. 

"I think we could learn much from them. If I had just spent more time watching the rooks, my wife would've felt more attended to." 

Victoria shakes her head and murmurs like a forbidden promise, "She should have never left you. I would never do such a thing." 

Briefly, William thinks of his wife, of staying by her side as she laid there dying, holding Augustus' hand in the dark, his life being so dark and meaningless without a reason to continue. And there she was. His corresponding star, his Gemini, a new light in a dark sky that he thought he was lost in. 

The sky will have to be dark again. Night is closing in. Strangely his lips quirk up in a small smile, since somewhere this is a Greek comedy, whilst being a Shakespearean tragedy. Two star-crossed lovers who will never be together. He finds it's almost funny how all they'll be is "almost" when the stars say they should be more. 

"No. I believe when you give your heart, it will be without hesitation." He's seen her love. Seen the intimate smiles just for him, heard her complain about other members of the court, seen her listen to him like an attentive pupil waiting for the next lesson. He knows this day's been coming, ever since he first met Victoria, kneeled down for her and kissed her hand, the very hand he still holds now, the last remaining intimacy he expects to have from her, his Queen. "But you cannot give it to me." 

"I think you have it already," she tells him, a lone confession to any God who gave them this soft dream, the Heavens giving them this chance. And as is the case with these doomed lovers, they can not be Gemini. Instead they are stars in two separate galaxies, planets apart but close enough to see the other shine. Together but far away enough to yearn for a time when perhaps they can shine together, in this life or the next galaxy. 

William shakes his head, having to cut her down harsh before it hurts any more. "No, you must keep it intact, for someone else." 

'Someone else,' he says, the words rolling round his mouth like slow poison, killing him since the day they met. Only now have his words become thick and cloying enough for him to realise that only in his wildest dreams will there not have be a someone else. He is Prime Minister and her subject; she is Queen and his ruler and not even in another galaxy will those two stars be together. 

He smiles again, hides his pain and burns the memory of her soft hands in his so that even when he is dying, he will never forget when he was happy, when they were just William and Victoria. He drops her hands, a Herculean task, before he falls to his knees and cries, atoms begging to rejoin. 

"I have no use for it, you see. Like a rook, I mate for life." 

He sees the minute pain in her eyes, sees the smallest twitch of her hands desperate to be cupped by his. And then it clicks. The resignation, the silent scream of stars in distant galaxies, Victoria becomes a Queen once more, no longer a ordinary woman. 

"I see. Then I am sorry to have disturbed you, Lord Melbourne." She bids farewell and walks away from him and his rooks. He watches her until he can no longer bear it and turns away from his Queen walking away from him again. He knows the distress he's caused. He wonders that perhaps in another life, they would be ordinary people, an ordinary man and woman in ordinary love. 

Yet here, they will never be ordinary people. Star-crossed lovers is a better term. Destined to be doomed. And yet even as star-crossed lovers, their story just ends in "almost". Atoms almost became one again. Stars almost became Gemini again. Rooks almost mate for life once more. But they don't. Atoms rip apart from each other. Stars fade, losing each other in the sky. Rooks soar past each other on different flight paths, their wings so close to touching. 

Perhaps, if not in the next or even in the one after that, some heavenly being will see their suffering, see the fond looks, see the what they could have been, and let them rise up from a world saying "no", looking up at the sky. They will see the other flying and maybe, just maybe, for once they'll be each other's rook.

**Author's Note:**

> Literally the most pretentious thing I've ever written, I was trying a different writing technique. Also I read somewhere that autistic people struggle to use similes and metaphors when writing, I like to say fuck you to the establishment and go against them
> 
> I'm currently writing another fic for these two, it'll be a modern fake dating AU. It would be my first multi-chapter fic that I've ever published and I'm in my last year of secondary school so I'm not quite sure how frequently I'd be able to upload it but I have all the chapters planned and I can guarantee that it will have a happy ending. Anyway here's my contribution to the Vicbourne fandom, may we all sink together
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr!](lostlibraryofalex.tumblr.com)


End file.
